


Tactus Significativa

by jessebee



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cuddling & Snuggling, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Psychological Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-07
Updated: 2019-02-07
Packaged: 2019-10-24 02:49:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17696207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jessebee/pseuds/jessebee
Summary: Obi-Wan needs a hug in the worst way.  Fortunately, Qui-Gon is there.





	Tactus Significativa

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sanerontheinside](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sanerontheinside/gifts).



Qui-Gon felt the too-familiar spike of distress in the Force a moment before he heard the voice.  “Qui?”

He looked up from the comm-set to see Obi-Wan standing – leaning, more accurately, but upright nonetheless – in the open bedroom doorway.  “You shouldn't be moving about on your own just yet,” Qui-Gon scolded, keeping his voice deliberately mild, as he rose and grabbed the portable comm-padd from its slot.

The face Obi-Wan made as Qui-Gon approached gave lie to every single one of his former padawan’s years of maturity, which was actually reassuring.  A laid-up, healing Kenobi was a grouchy Kenobi -- it was a lack of grouch that set off all of Qui-Gon’s alarms.

“How are you feeling?” Qui-Gon asked, brushing the backs of his fingers against the ancient, wrinkled fabric covering Obi-Wan’s shoulder.

“'m fine.”  Obi-Wan scowled, the bruising around his eyes adding flair to the expression and the underbrush-like tangle of his hair, grown to that awkward length between padawan and knight, capping it perfectly.  “Don't fuss.”

Qui-Gon treated that directive with all the weight it deserved, touching two fingers to Obi-Wan’s chin and looking closely at him.  

Definitely improved.  Obi-Wan’s color, excepting the bruising, was something approaching Human-normal, and his eyes appeared better, showing a greater portion of gray-blue iris now rather than the enormous black holes they had been.  Several days immersion in bacta had taken care of most of the physical injuries, and the rest would heal.

The damage wreaked by the psychotropic drugs Obi-Wan had been force-fed, though, that had left his emotional controls in tatters and his Force-sense deadened?   **_That_ ** was another matter.

“You do look better,” Qui-Gon allowed, “although you'll not be asking Mace for a spar anytime soon, yet, I think.  Did you sleep?”

“I'm _fine_.”  Obi-Wan twitched his chin out of Qui-Gon's light hold.

 _Certainly you are.  However –_  “That wasn't my question, dear one.”

Obi-Wan’s glare was directed somewhere beyond Qui-Gon’s left shoulder, and his mouth was – stubborn, was perhaps the word.

Which Qui-Gon wasn't having, despite the fact that none of this was in any way Obi-Wan’s fault.  “Obi-Wan?”

A near-soundless huff, but the ingrained habits of more than a decade prevailed.  “I did sleep. Some.” A half-shrug. “A bit.”

“A bit.  Then why are you not still in bed, sleeping more?”

Another huff.  Then the equally stubborn jaw set, and the crossing of Obi-Wan’s arms was no less emphatic for the fact that the man didn’t actually move.  “Because you aren't in it.”

 _Oh, love._  

Since he’d come out of the Healers’ tank and back to Qui-Gon’s quarters, Obi-Wan kept spitting out these bites of stark, raw truth, and every one of them felt – justified or not – like it had been gnawed off of Qui-Gon's own heart.  “That,” Qui-Gon said, his voice very carefully unconcerned, “is something we can fix.”

 

They ended up draped together on the big bed, Qui-Gon propped up against pillows and the wall and Obi-Wan curled sideways against his chest and very nearly in his lap.  The younger man settled himself with a grunt, rubbing his face briefly against Qui-Gon's bare chest before he stilled. Qui-Gon felt the press of Obi-Wan's still-too-prominent cheekbone, along with the tingle that told him that his own skin was reddening from the scrape of several days' worth of beard stubble.  Obi-Wan smelled a bit like bed-sheets too long unchanged; a water shower later would not go amiss.

The acrid sense of distress was easing, physical contact working its usual magic.  Healer Master Te’kla had cautioned him about the probability while Obi-Wan had floated, half alive, in bacta.  “He's going to need to touch you, Qui-Gon. Often.”

Qui-Gon had dragged his gaze from the motionless, red-tinted form and stared at the Healer instead, blinking to make her come into focus.  “You cannot think that would be a problem,” he said, before the last word registered on his weary brain. “How often?”

The answer had turned out to be “while awake." 

The touches began this time while Qui-Gon was working away on the padd.  Reports and other Council nonsense could only be put off for so long unless one had actually joined the Force, and Qui-Gon wasn’t laying any heavy bets about that exempting a being, either.  They began and persisted: soft touches; moist, silky-warm touches; touches that traveled slowly across his skin, cooler wafts of air following after, there, and there, and there… “What are you doing?”

“’s not a real question, right?” Obi-Wan mumbled, not looking up from the serious business of kissing Qui-Gon’s chest.  

“You were going to get some more sleep if I came back to bed.”

“Didn’t say that.”

“Obi-Wan – ”

“Nope.”  Obi-Wan had reached the edge of Qui-Gon’s left nipple, and the “pop” sound of the word blew  air over the little peak of flesh, which stood up obligingly. “Unspoken implication doesn’t equal verbal contract.”

Qui-Gon chuckled despite himself, even as his breath caught as Obi-Wan’s clever tongue rasped over ruched-up, sensitive skin.  “So you’re trying to distract me instead.”

“I never try, Yoda’d yell at me.”

“Love – ”

“’m living in the Moment.”

Whimsically said, but Qui-Gon’s heart constricted – hard – just the same.  

He let the comm-padd fall to the bed and put both arms around Obi-Wan, curling one hand around the back of the coppery head.  “You _will_ heal, Obi-Wan,” he murmured.  “You _will_ , and you will see again, the Healers are sure of that.”

“Thinking of the future, Master?  You?” Obi-Wan’s voice went from teasing to terrified in a heartbeat, the Force around them souring with it like bile at the back of Qui-Gon's throat.  “I’m _blind_ , Qui-Gon!   _This_ ,” his fingers wrapped around Qui-Gon’s arm and tightened, “is the _only_ way I can see you, the only – ”

“Shhh.”  Qui-Gon hugged him, and buried his mouth in his partner’s tangled hair.  “I have you. Trust in the Force.”

A sob.  “I can barely _feel_ the Force, any more than I can _see_ you now – !”

“But you are beginning to feel it again, and you certainly can _feel_ me,” Qui-Gon said, tightening his hug.  

The sob morphed into something like a wet laugh.  “Oh yes. That’d be why I’m clinging to you like a youngling -- this - ah, gods.”  Obi-Wan shook his head and Qui-Gon _felt_ the mental thrash, the instinctive reach for a Force that Obi-Wan couldn’t yet touch, before he hiccuped and made another try at crawling inside Qui-Gon’s skin instead.  “Sorry, I’m s-sorry, I can’t – ”

“Shhh,” Qui-Gon murmured again, and rocked the other man a little, side to side, his memory flashing unavoidably to the times he’d comforted his then-young padawan like this, before age and training and dignity had made those times few and far between.

And he’d missed it like a lost limb, in those years right after Obi-Wan’s Knighting.  Not the need to comfort injury, no, but the _contact_ : the feel of Obi-Wan in his arms.

“It’s the drugs, dear one, affecting your controls, you know that,” he murmured after a bit, as Obi-Wan’s breathing steadied.  “But their effects are fading, and your eyes are healing. Your Force-sense is returning. All will be well. Besides, how often does one get a Healer actually ordering you to stay in bed and cuddle?”

Obi-Wan snorted, and the sound that followed was more surely humor this time.  “So you’re saying that I really should just live in this Moment?”

Qui-Gon smiled and planted another kiss on top of Obi-Wan’s head.  “Very good, my young apprentice.”

Obi-Wan pinched him.

*

**Author's Note:**

> For Sanerontheinside, who asked for:  
> 18\. kisses where one person is sitting in the other’s lap  
> 19\. kisses meant to distract the other person from whatever they were intently doing  
> 20\. top of head kisses
> 
> posted on tumblr ages ago and somehow ... never moved. My bad. Many thanks to meggory for saying it didn't suck :-)


End file.
